By Richard Bammer/ RBammer@TheReporter.com
Posted: 07/28/2009
Dave Matthews, director of plant operations for NorthBay Healthcare, discusses the benefits VacaValley Hospital has seen since it installed a new state-of-the-art cogeneration plant. (Joel Rosenbaum / The Reporter)
Hospitals are like every other business trying to stay solvent during a prolonged and deep recession: They want to save dollars whenever and wherever they can.
But beefing up the bottom line can look and feel so much better if and when a hospital, in ways small and large, goes green.
NorthBay Healthcare, which owns and operates two Solano County hospitals -- VacaValley in Vacaville and NorthBay Medical Center in Fairfield -- recently joined the list of area businesses reducing their carbon footprint.
The hospital firm recently switched on three cogeneration facilities at the hospitals (two in Fairfield, one in Vacaville), a move expected to save $3.8 million -- and plenty of natural gas -- over a decade.
Dave Mathews of Vacaville, director of plant operations and general services for NorthBay, said the "cogen units," as they are called for short, may save as much as 30 percent in annual electricity costs, money that otherwise would go to PG&E.
From start to finish, the cogen units were three years in the making, a project with Siemens Building Technologies Inc., which spelled it out in a $2.6 million contract that will be paid off in 10 years.
Cogeneration -- also known as combined heat and power -- is a thermodynamically efficient use of fuel. When electricity is generated, some heat is wasted. In cogeneration, the energy is used.
Mathews said cogeneration captures the excess heat through heat exchangers, heating water that would normally be heated separately by boilers (much like a common hot water heater in a home), thus offsetting the natural gas normally used to heat water. A cogen unit reaches an efficiency level of nearly 90 percent, compared to about 55 percent in a conventional power plant. This means less fuel is used to make the same amount of energy. At the same time, a cogen unit reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
Showing off the new unit at VacaValley Hospital, 1000 Nut Tree Road, Mathews said it looked like a "small locomotive engine," as the boxy, beige-painted engine hummed and whirred on a lot near the hospital's emergency entrance. A silvery, metallic radiator, a cooling device, rested atop the engine, an ENI 85.
With the afternoon sun bearing down on him and the air a toasty 105 degrees Fahrenheit, Mathews said, "It runs 24/7/365."
In a press release, Diane Barney, a spokeswoman for NorthBay, said the natural-gas turbine engines housed in the cogen units are similar to helicopter engines, spinning the generators that make electricity.
After a "one-year courtship" with Siemens -- and after getting the go-ahead from the hospital firm's boards of directors -- the project, which Siemens financed, was under way, built, installed and fine-tuned within six months, noted Mathews. He said the energy savings for the two hospitals are guaranteed to reach 2.8 million kilowatt hours per year. Additionally, PG&E sells natural gas at cheaper rates for those operating cogen units, he said.
"So there's an incentive" to install cogeneration facilities, said Mathews, noting that the start-up cost "competes with the needs of physicians, who'd rather have a new CT scanner."
The approval process to install the cogen unit at VacaValley, a 50-bed hospital built in 1988, was challenging but required. It included OKs from the state of California and the Yolo Air Quality Management District. The NorthBay Medical Center units required OKs from the state and Bay Area Air Quality Management District.
Barney said the $3.8 million in savings over 10 years included cost reductions not only from running cogen units but also other improvements at both hospitals, including new automation and control systems, lighting upgrades and waste monitoring systems.
